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It is Friday, September 1. The moon was full two nights ago, what they call a blue moon. A moon that is brighter and larger than usual by about 14%, or what the New York Times called the size difference between a nickel and a dime. My girlfriend and I each took a nibble of a weed gummy. While the drugs licked at the edge of my consciousness, she tried to explain the difference between perigee and apogee. Here is how I understand it: the moon’s orbit is an oval, not a circle. The earth is slightly closer to one side of the oval. When the moon is at the point in its orbit closest to the earth, it’s called perigee. It appears larger and brighter. This is a supermoon. When this occurs, there is also a phenomenon on earth called the supertide, or especially strong tides. Both my girlfriend and I started our periods on the day of the full moon. This too is somehow caused by the invisible pull of the moon. We went outside late in the evening to take the dog out and look at the moon. It sits exactly above my back lot, just above the tree line. Like it’s waiting for me. Like someone left a light on. Maybe someone did. 

It is my birthday month. In seven days, I’ll turn 28. Something about this new age feels like a shift. Though into what I’m still not sure. Real adulthood? The last year before the last year of my twenties? A shift away from frivolity and the minimal responsibilities of this past near-decade? I don’t fear aging the way many people do, but something about this birthday makes my chest clench. My face looks different than it did three years ago. It’s thinner and more drawn. I have wrinkles around my eyes. I get Botox in my forehead but only once a year because I try to convince myself every time is the last time so I let it wear out completely before I do it again. I am not afraid of being old but I am afraid of my forehead wrinkles, though I’ve somehow had those since I was 15. However, I think I’ll always feel young because I am comfortable sitting curled up in public. Or maybe it’s a youngest child thing. I’ll always be young to two people in the world. 

If you’re reading this, that’s strange. I decided to begin writing here without telling anyone. Nothing written here will be shared to social media, nor will it reach you in your email inbox. I won’t let you know when there’s a new post and I make no promises about cadence, content, or form. I am interested in what happens to writing if no one reads it. What am I emboldened to say? What do I keep to myself? 

I have long felt conflicted about publishing writing. I am torn between an obsession with perfection and craft, a desire to get things just right before they’re seen by anyone else — and a desire to let things be imperfect, to send them into the world bravely with the knowledge that the only goal of my writing is to write. As Jane Hirshfield says, “Writers write not to be writers, but to be writing.”

I’m here to be writing. I hope you don’t follow along.